"The very first review blurb on the back of the copy of the book which I got from the library written by presumably a disgusting pervert at Vanity Fair whose internet search history should be investigated by the feds describes Lolita as quote, "The only convincing love story of our century," which is perhaps the most perfect summation of what I can only describe as a cultural mania in which nearly everyone is for some reason pathologically committed to misunderstanding what already appears to me on a mere first reading as a not terribly difficult to understand story of a - and please jot this down in your notepad - deranged pedophile.

The one correct description of this book that I heard long ago from an unremembered source described this as, not a love story, but a horror story as written by the monster, and in case it wasn't obvious (as evidently it apparently is not), that's what it is.

The irony is that whether people praise this as a romantic tale of forbidden love or condemn it as some kind of pro-pedophilia screed, they end up proving one of the points that the book itself is making, that they themselves are being roped in by the contrast between function and form - between what happens, and how what happens is expressed. The cultural impact of this book, depressingly, demonstrates the exact kind of culture that allows men like Humbert Humbert to flourish in the first place.

When one hears the term "Lolita" (and it's almost more word than name now), one imagines some kind of heavily made-up, lipsticked, underage seductress. Because despite how obvious the truth is, despite all the confessions leading up to it, when H.H. tells the reader that Dolores was a willing participant, that she in any way seduced him... whether they praise or condemn the book, they do still believe him when he says that. Even as the word rape comes up numerous times throughout the book, the narrative that the rape was more than statutory never sticks; it was rape not just in the sense that a minor can't consent, but rape (repeated, habitual rape) in the most traditional understanding of the term; i.e. even if one were to say hypothetically that she "technically" "legally" could consent, as a minor, it still would have been no less rape.

Another review blurb describes Humbert as a character who "never deludes or excuses himself," and this is one of the subtler tricks that the book pulls off. He repeatedly emphasizes that he knows he's a terrible person, that he did a terrible thing, he describes himself openly as a pedophile, and as mentioned the word 'rape' even comes up more than once... but there's a sort of perverted irony to the way he does this, and it may be familiar to anyone who's ever known a self-hating narcissist (Humbert may or may not be this, but the tactic is familiar). He denigrates and degrades himself, insults himself freely, but every time with a sense that he's both preempting outside criticisms, attacking himself before anyone else can, but also doing so in an effort to make himself appear less threatening. He knows he's bad, he says it, he remarks on how stupid and silly he is, he emasculates himself and allows himself to look oafish, and the irony is, by conceding his many crimes, he somehow manages to obscure the real violence behind them. He becomes a bumbler moreso than a barbarian.

By conceding the moral objections he knows you'll have, he's able to create a bridge between himself and the reader, inviting you into his world and his portrait of events. Clever, clever man.

Of course, he deludes himself constantly, and his admissions only serve to mask this delusion from both the reader and even himself. He still believes that what he had with Dolores was any kind of genuine, meaningful love; he believes that he's a man tortured by his sad sad backstory, that his unresolved love as a youngster has anything to do with his present behavior, attempting to mythologize and narrativize his pedophilia.

The book is consistently exceptionally well-written - one of the most eminently readable books just from its fantastic deployment of the English language (and sprinkles of French, why not!), which serves the dual function of making this not just a generally fantastic book, but also allows Humbert the character to lighten the gravity of his actions. No matter what he does, whether openly confessed or obscured, we find ourselves drawn in by his incredible manner of conveying the story. The language is beautiful and poetic and witty and intelligent, and we find in it the flashes of insight into the human condition that one expects from any novel of this caliber. The final chapter is such an exquisite piece of writing that, taken out of context and with no knowledge of the horror that preceded it, the claim that this was "the only convincing love story of our century" might even appear to make sense. Why, he was willing to sacrifice it all to render his Lolita immortal through literature! How romantic! How beautiful! The gentle soul of the artist on display! The humility, the passion of it all!

But, of course, the horror that contextualizes this prose persists, and there is no true romance here. Through the power of art, Humbert indeed deludes himself - and so many decades later, still continues to delude countless readers, who - love him or hate him - still believe that he was truly in love, still believe that Dolores Haze, "[his] Lolita," in any way reciprocated his sensual and sexual desires toward her. Humbert is a monster and a serial rapist, and he (the character, not innocent Nabokov) wrote one of the most exceptional works of literature for the purpose of blunting this truth; the joke of the novel is on us."

"2.5 stars. Well, that was a bloated disappointment. It is a shame, because there was actually a really great novel in there. I normally DNF & don't review books that I can tell aren't going to be 3 stars or higher for me, since life is short and who really needs to rage read when there are so many amazing books out there? Most of my 2 star books on here are books that I finish because I can see a shimmer of something worthwhile in, but it didn't quite make it in the end.

I really loved Moriarty's What Alice Forget, and this had some similar themes - those complicated feelings of looking back at your life choices and seeing how everything is so much messier, more beautiful, and more soul crushing than you could have imagined when you made them; and then the ways we try to find other people to fill those holes in ourselves from those disappointments and losses, and the complications that come from making those choices. There are a billion books out there about how someone's spouse failed to give them the life they'd hoped for, so they go have an affair. I'm very, very bored with that genre. I liked how these women had turned to platonic relationships with other women and communities of women that put them in destructive and problematic places, and then Moriarty asks these juicy, unanswerable questions about when you cross that line from a great friendship into depending on that relationship in ways that are harmful to you.

I was really into this book when it explored Joy's experience of looking back at the sacrifices she had made in her marriage and motherhood, but it was buried under an enormous cast of characters and their own problems. By trying to include so many of their inner lives, she just kind of skimmed the surface of a dozen or so issues without really having anything interesting to say about any of them. I didn't care about the mystery. People did ridiculous things that only served to advance the plot. The dialogue wasn't nearly as witty and enjoyable as in other books of hers I've read. At the end of the day, it was just boring. I didn't care what happened to any character besides Joy, and I just didn't see how she emotionally got from where she started to where she ended the novel. Her editor really needed to ask her to trim and focus this novel - it could have been excellent."

"I enjoy Levin as a thinker and writer in general, even though I'm a liberal. I found myself agreeing more with the spirit of the book than the arguments and the applications.

The spirit of this book is to look back at the intentions and culture of the Constitutional era itself to find centripetal political forces that can unify people again in our age of polarization. I do like the idea of the Constitution as a core document of our political culture that sets the groundwork for our political competition. Levin argues that a major problem with our politics today is less that we disagree too much, but that we have forgotten how to disagree constructively. Politics, he argues, is all about learning to act collectively while often disagreeing individually. He contends, and I mostly agree, that the genius of our system is institutions that enable majorities to rule within boundaries and within mechanisms that force them to reach out to minorities. Everyone is a minority in some way (I'm a white guy, but I'm also an atheist, for example) and wants protections for their minority views/interests. Slim majorities should not be able to simply dominate minorities until the next election; instead, power should be chopped up and slowed down in many ways within the system (separation of powers btw branches, federal-state-local powers, a bicameral legislature representing different publics, etc). The cost of all this is that the system moves slowly, but the long-term benefits are enabling a free and pluralistic society to flourish, encouraging habits of open-mindedness and common citizenship, and inhibiting dangerous concentrations of power.

Undergirding this system is the belief that in a free society people will always disagree about what it good, often at fundamental levels, and that there's an innate human tendency to want to force one's views on others. Tolerance and cooperation have to be cultivated, and majorities always have to be restrained. I would add, in keeping more with the liberal tradition, that ANY concentration of power should be looked on with high skepticism, whether that's a large democratic majority, an oligarchy/aristocracy, a monarch/dictator, etc.

Levin also has some nice reflections on the need to make Congress more central to our politics again. Congress, he argues, was intended by the Framers to be the central body of American politics. It would be most directly accountable to the people and would be the site where most of their political contestation took place. Now, however, a gridlocked Congress has taken a backseat to our focus on the Supreme Court and the presidency. Each side looks to the President to use executive power (or the Court to use judicial power) as a shortcut for actually passing legislation (think pressure on Biden to relieve student loans). While he's not very specific about what to do in reform terms at any point in the book (a significant flaw) I did like the idea of expanding the House to allow for a more

One up front problem with his argument, however, is that YL doesn't look seriously at the causes of polarization today. He briefly examines social media and media stovepipes but doesn't look at what scholars call asymmetrical polarization, which is that the GOP has moved further rightward than the Dems have leftward, although both are moving outward. The Democrats have a broader and more varied base and stronger institutions that continually pull them center-wards, whereas the GOP has a more monolithic base (rural, white, older) that enables them to be more extreme and still win. When you combine that with a system (Senate, Electoral College, gerrymandering, etc) that systematically gives more power to heavily rural and white parts of the country. The GOP has broken more basic norms and guardrails of democracy, even before Trump, and

So what you have happening now isn't Levin's vision of a balanced system where slim majorities are empowered but still have to reach out to minorities to pass legislation and govern. You have a system where minorities frequently wield majority-level power in the system, and when they are minorities they use the counter-majoritarian parts of the system to block the majority from doing what it wants (The GOP has used the filibuster, for example, way more than the Dems). Levin seems not to consider it an issue that while the Senate is currently a 51-49 Democratic advantage, the Democratic side of the Senate represents 54 million more people than the REpublican side. In other words, one side systematically has to reach out more to the center and garner a heavy majority of votes to exercise very slim margins of power.

Levin doesn't appreciate how these counter-majoritarian institutions are driving our dysfunction today, and defenses of institutions like the EC or Senate fall short. He argues that these institutions prevent the parties from simply pandering to their bases, but that's what they are increasingly doing under the current system! Moreover, these institutions effectively give more power to certain people, in violation of the basic principles of our democracy. They lead to absurdities like a party that hasn't won the popular vote in a pres election since 2004 appointing more SC judges than a party that won in 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2024. So one form of imbalance grows exponentially within our system to create larger gaps where what the public wants is way out of whack with who actually holds power in our institutions.

Overall, Levin wants what most Americans want: a system where majorities rule but minorities retain rights and a say in law-making and in which very slim majorities cannot exercise overwhelming power. We already have enough counter-majoritiarian and consensus-forcing elements in our system without the radical discrepancies created by things like the Electoral College and the Senate. Ziblatt and Levitsky make this argument drawing on the Federalist Papers and other sources to show why our system is so out of whack at the moment. I think their answer is far more persuasive than Levin's, who never really comes down from the higher reaches of political theory to the grimier realities of contemporary politics. I think more fertilization with non-political theory fields of poli-sci would have really strengthened this book, which is nonetheless worth reading."